A Structural Analysis of Nursing Continuing Education Organizations and Programs

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Abstract

Purpose of the study. This study was conducted to
determine the components of organizations whose mission is nursing continuing education.
Method. The study was conducted in two phases. In
Phase I, 1,134 currently registered nurses were randomly selected and asked by questionnaire which was the most valuable nursing continuing education program which they had attended this past year. Further, they were asked to identify the organization which offered that program.
Seventy-two percent (813) nurses responded.
In Phase II, twenty-eight organizations were randomly selected from the seventy-one different organizations identified in Phase I. The twenty-eight organizations fit into eleven different categories. Using James Price's
collected tools, the following organizational variables were assessed, using an interview tool:
Administrative Staff, Autonomy, Centralization,
Communication, Coordination, Dispersion, Effectiveness, Formalization, Mechanization, Motivation, Bases of Power, Routinization,
Satisfaction, Size {Budget, Personnel}, Span of Control.
Findings. Based on the values for all of the variables except Autonomy, Centralization, Formalization, and Mechanization, the researcher failed to reject the hypothesis of no difference for the organizations that were a part of this study. All organizations studied were deemed effective by the respondents in Phase I of this study. A conceptual model "The Anatomy of an Organization, II was created for grouping the variables for further analysis of the selected
organizations. Further, the organizations were grouped by primary purpose into educational and non-educational for analysis. Finally, the organizations were analyzed on the major concepts of the model in groups according to multipurpose,
limited purpose, and single purpose organizations.
In the different kind of analyses done, there were no great differences found in the various types of effective organization. Structure and motivation were the variables that were shown to be the most important variables in the organizations in this study.